Resonance Days

by TakerFoxx

Falling their mutual demise at each other's hands, Kyoko and Sayaka wake up in a strange world. Now, with Kyoko's soul gem missing and Sayaka's humanity and personality only partially restored, they must band together to survive.

32. Monsterland, Part 3

Helpless…

For one brief moment, Kyoko was thirteen years old again, a newly contracted Puella Magi now facing her first witch. Kyubey had done what he could to prepare her, had warned her of the witches' horrific natures, of their power and lack of mercy or remorse. She had spent days mentally readying herself, pumping herself up by watching monster movies and telling herself that no matter how scary the witch might be, she could handle it.

And then the moment had finally come. She had found a witch, one that had taken up residence inside of a movie theater. Excited and eager to prove herself, she had rushed in, weapon bared and ready to do battle.

But then the world had changed. She found herself surrounded by dancing popcorn bags full of the skulls of children, all of them laughing at her. Great reels of film spun endlessly, projecting scenes of horrific torture and mutilation all over the walls. And the witch herself had risen up, a long, sinuous black pole from which dozens of flat televisions screens hung off of jutting bars, all displaying more of the same. Bloody children. Mutilated corpses. And at the very top was an immense movie projector, the reels spinning, the bulb staring down at her like an unblinking eye.

If one were to describe Meagan the Movie Theater Witch to Kyoko beforehand, she would have probably laughed and called it ridiculous. But there was a difference between hearing of something bizarre secondhand and experiencing for one's self. And in that moment, all of Kyoko's preparation had suddenly come crumbling down. She had frozen in place, shaking hands gripping tight to the spear, terrified eyes staring right into the light of the projector.

It was the same now. She knew what dockengauts were, had seen pictures of what they were capable of. She had even met one, and mouthed off to it even after learning why they were so feared. But that was then. And now, as she stood exhausted and frazzled in a monster's lair far beneath the surface of an alien world, she found herself unable to move. She wasn't the plucky fighter staring down a big, tough bully anymore. She had been dumped right into its home, practically trussed up with an apple in her mouth, and they both knew it.

"Aw," buzzed the dockengaut. "Ittzzzz ssscared. How adorableszzzz."

Kyoko blinked. Then her face hardened, the fear wiped away in an instant. She had conquered her terror before and destroyed the Movie Theater Witch, so she could do it again. She summoned a spear and stood in the ready position, the point directed right at what passed for the monster's face. She wasn't a terrified rookie anymore. She had face bigger and scarier things than this one uppity alien and had come through. She wasn't about to let herself turn to jelly because of a bunch of bugs.

Unfortunately, even with the spear being jabbed right at it, that bunch of bugs didn't seem all that scared of her either. "Thizzzz izzzz my lucky day," it said. "I'vvve alvayzzzz vanted a meat zzzlavezzzz. But zzzzhey are zzzzo ezzzpensssive, and in zzzuch short zzzzupply." It started to advance, the spiders at the bottom scurrying forward over the rough, stone floor, making it seem as if the dockengaut were floating towards Kyoko. Legs uncurled from its face, reaching out towards the human girl. "But here one izzzzz. I didn't know zzzhey did delivery!"

"I'm nobody's slave," Kyoko hissed out through gritted teeth. She jabbed with her spear in warning. "Try to eat me, and I swear I'll make you choke on every bite."

"Oh?" The spiders that made up the dockengaut's body rubbed their bristled legs together, creating a dry, rasping sound that eerily resembled an amused chuckle. "Zzzweet zzzhing, you are in my world now, zzzzz." Legs rose up all over the dockengaut's body, making it look like it was covered with tiny black quills. "How ezzzactly do you propozzze to zzztop me?"

You just didn't get straight lines like that anymore.

Before the dockengaut could come any closer, Kyoko hurled her spear right into the center of its mass. It hit and hit well, the head piercing into the cluster of spiders and sticking. The dockengaut paused, though it didn't seem hurt. Rather, it actually seemed curious about what she was planning on doing next.

Kyoko wasn't about to disappoint it.

A Puella Magi's weapon was far more versatile than it appeared on the surface. At a first glance, Kyoko's spears seemed to be work as effective mid-range weapons, with their razor-sharp blades at one end, weighted balls at the other, and a segmented pole that separated and came together whenever she wanted, allowing it to function not only for the usual thrusts, jabs, and slashes one would normally use a spear for, but also as an entangling weapon, able to easily smack an opponent around, bind them tightly, strike them like a whip, or knock them senseless with the weight. Thanks to her constant battles against witches and rival Puella Magi alike, Kyoko had grown quite adept at seamlessly switching between its forms to batter her opponent around. It didn't matter if she was up against a five-story monster or another superpowered girl, she could take them on with equal, and brutal, efficiency.

However, that wasn't all they were capable of, and ever since her violent arrival in the afterlife, Kyoko had time and time again been forced to get creative. As such, she had come to learn that, much like Mami's wide range of artillery, her trusty spears could do all sorts of nifty things.

When the spear penetrated the dockengaut's being, the head suddenly sprouted two additional fins, perpendicular to the first two, like a Philip's head screwdriver. Then, before the creature could react, Kyoko continued the resemblance to hardware tools by making the head start spinning like a power drill.

Sparks flashed and tiny black and white legs shredded, but the dockengaut's speed was impressive. Its entire bulk around and above where the spear had hit simply fell apart to both sides, the spiders separating themselves and falling away from the blade. Kyoko started to swing her spinning spear around, but then she saw that several spiders had gotten onto the pole and were now scurrying towards her hands.

Kyoko tossed the spear away and rolled back, putting distance between her and the swarm. In seconds the dockengaut had reformed and was surging towards her again. There was a small release of magic, and a barrier of dark red shield-plates flew up to cut the room in half.

The dockengaut didn't even slow down. Its body simply divided into several smaller swarms which crawled through the plates to gather together on the other side. "Zzzhat was pointlezzzz," it hissed. "Zzzzhere izzz nozzzzing I cannot-"

Kyoko lifted the special "spear" she had summoned up and brought it down. Instead of being tipped with a triangular blade, the head was flat, square, and the size of a wrestling ring. It hit right behind its massive shoulder and bore monster down, crushing it to the floor.

Kyoko smirked. "Looks like a bug, moves like a bug, squashes like one too."

Then her smile died. A great many of the spiders were scurrying off out from under her makeshift spiderswatter and scattering away into the shadows. Furthermore, the plate hadn't gone as low as she had been hoping.

She grunted and tried to shove it down further, hoping to crush as many as she could. It jerked and wobbled, but spiders kept escaping. Finally she lifted it up to see what the problem was.

To her dismay, only a small handful of spiders looked like they had actually been smashed to death. Furthermore, the number shredded by her drilling spear trick from earlier was depressingly small.

This wasn't good.

The harsh rattle of sharp joints skittering over stone returned. Letting the swatter vanish, Kyoko took an involuntarily step back as she scanned the room. Spiders were moving everywhere, across the floor on the other end of the room, up the walls, over the computer equipment, and onto the ceiling.

"Not bad, zzzzz," the dockengaut said, its dead-leaves voice dripping with scorn. Kyoko tensed up. The voice was coming from every direction now and echoing throughout the small cavern. "You got zzzzome fight in youzzzz. I like zzzhat. Makezzz zzzhe end morezzz zzzazzisfying, zzzz."

The spiders were starting to come towards her. Kyoko leapt off the ground before they could reach her boots. She summoned up a wide shield under her feet and brought out another spear of the traditional sort. "Satisfying, huh?" she said, slowly turning in a circle, keeping a wary eye for any spiders that got too close. "I don't know if anyone told you this, but I'm just skin and gas. No meat in me at all. Be kind of a disappointing meal, all in all."

The dockengaut laughed, sending shivers down Kyoko's back. "Zzzo zays zzzomeone whozzz never tried zzzzoul gazzzz," it whispered. "Inhaling it inzzooo all of my bodiezzz…mmm. It izzz intozzzicating."

Kyoko's grip on her spear tightened. "So you're gonna use me as a bong?"

"I'm going to uzzze you for a great mannny thingzzzz. But the truzzz izzz, there izzz meat aplenty in theezzzz hillzzz." It laughed again, louder and sharper this time. "Itzzz the act izzelf zzzhat we enjoy, zzzz."

To this, Kyoko had no reply.

She scanned the room. Save for the now-closed hole that she had fallen through, there was no visible exit. And why would there be? The dockengaut didn't need a full-sized door to enter and leave. All those tiny holes in the wall were all it needed.

Stay calm, Kyoko, she told herself. Those are some big machines over there, and odds are they didn't drop out of the chute. It had to have gotten them in here somehow. There has to be a hidden door. Just stay calm and-

Then she felt something small fall on her shoulder.

Kyoko jerked back and almost fell off of her shield. One of the spiders was now clinging to her jacket. She tried to flick it off, but it dug in with its barbed legs and hung on.

Then, as Kyoko was about to cut it off with her spear, it raised its four sharp antennae up and jabbed them straight down. They pierced through the fabric of her jacket and shirt to plunge into her skin.

Kyoko yelped and seized the spider with her hand. With a hard tug, she managed to rip it fully off of her. The barbs on its legs jabbed into her fingers, causing dozens of tiny flashes of pain. She tried to shake it off, but it wouldn't let out.

Then it twisted its body around, and Kyoko saw that it had several needlelike mandibles surrounding a pulsing mouth on its underside. It lunged and tore a chunk off of her thumb.

"Ah!" Kyoko flipped her hand around and jammed her spear right into the little beast. It took more than it should have, but she managed to split the thing in half. It jerked and fell limp, dark violet vapor rising from its corpse.

"Ew, ew, ew," Kyoko groaned as she ripped the spider's remains out of her hand, or at least most of them. Some of the barbed legs tore off from the body and remained stuck. And unfortunately, she didn't have time to remove them, because that was when she felt something else land in her ponytail and start crawling up its length.

Now Kyoko was very fond on her long, flowing, copper hair, but she wasn't about to let it get used as a ladder for something that wanted to eat her head. With a pang of regret, she swept her spear up behind her back, slicing it off just behind the black ribbon that held it in place. Then she leapt from her shield across the room onto a second, smaller platform that had just flashed into existence.

A glance back confirmed what she had feared. The spiders were dropping from the ceiling onto the shield she had just abandoned. What was more, the ones on the floor were using each other as stepstools to rise up and climb onboard from below. Once there, they stabbed down with their knifepoint legs. Kyoko's heart fell when they managed to penetrate the magical metal. Unable to hold its form, the shield dissolved into red sparks.

The spiders then gathered back together, reforming the dockengaut's body. Even without a face its poise still managed to convey a smug smile. "I truzzzzt I hazzze made my point, zzzz."

It had indeed. The dockengaut was just playing with her. It could have swarmed all over any time it wanted and eaten her alive. Kyoko felt a bitter chill seep through her. Her shoulders and neck had tightened up, and she felt her limbs startle to tremble.

Kyoko was still determined to fight to the bitter end. She was not about to let this creepy monster beat her. Unfortunately, she was becoming less and less sure that she could beat it.

"Oh?" the dockengaut said. "Nozzzzing to zzzay? Wherezzz your tough talk now, zzzz? Wherezzz your, zzzz, bravado?"

"You're not going to eat me," Kyoko said flatly. It was far from her most creative cry of defiance, but it was all she had at the moment. "I'll kill you if you try."

"Oh, you vill? Zzzzsweet zzzzing, I am already dead. Azzz are you. It izzzz zzze vay of zzzhings." The dockengaut then lifted its overlong arms, the barbed legs at the end spread like talons. "And no one knowzzz deazzz like zzzhe dockengautzzz."

"Big talk for a bug," Kyoko snapped. She gestured with her spear toward the pile of mutilated spider parts on the floor. "I already took more off you than you did me. And you know what? I can keep this up all day. Can you?"

There was a brief pause, and Kyoko found herself wishing that the dockengaut had an actual face. At least then she would have an indication of what it was thinking.

Then it purred, "Try me."

The next thing Kyoko knew, several glistening silver strands were streaking right at her. She yelped and tried to dive out of the way, but they wrapped around the pole of her spear and yanked hard to the side. Kyoko was flung loose and sent hurtling toward the wall.

She managed to twist herself around and hit the cave wall with her feet. Her knees bunched up and she rebounded off, spinning her shoulder around to hit the floor in a roll, bringing her into a crouch. When she came up, she got a good look at what had just happened, and what she saw made her freeze.

The white spiders clustered near the end of the dockengaut's arms had all disconnected their legs and stuck them straight out. From there, they had somehow grown several meters in length and were now twisting around the dockengaut like the writhing tentacles of an eldritch horror. Several were still wrapped around Kyoko's spear and were drawing it close to the dockengaut.

"Zzzilly humanzzz," the dockengaut said as it nonchalantly twirled Kyoko's own weapon around. "Have you zzzo quickly forgotten? Ve too took zzzhe Incubatorzzz contract." It held the spear horizontally right in front of its "face." The tendrils wrapped fully around the pole and bent it hard. It shook for a bit, resisting, but then it snapped in half. "Your kind hazzz no monopoly on magic, zzz."

At this, Kyoko felt herself go cold. A vanilla human versus a dockengaut would always end with the human having their bones picked clean. A Puella Magi versus a dockengaut was a different story. The odds were still against them, but at least they had a fighting chance.

But as the dockengaut had just reminded her, they were all Puella Magi here, infused with the Incubators' magic.

Kyoko couldn't win. She had already been fighting hard for the last couple of hours, while the dockengaut was still fresh. Even if it wasn't, it had just proved that it could taken whatever she dished out without so much as flinching, and the second it grew bored with their game it was going to eat her raw.

Kyoko was tired, drained, alone in enemy territory, and facing a horrifying opponent that outmatched her in every way. And even if by some insane miracle she did manage to win, her victory would only cost her what little energy she had left, and there were more monsters between her and safety. She wasn't an idiot. A hothead, sure, but not an idiot. This was not the time to fight. It was the time to run.

But where?

Unfortunately Kyoko wasn't given much time to consider her options, because the dockengaut was after her again.

Kyoko darted to one side, dodging nimbly as its flexible appendages snapped at where she had been. Her intuition screamed that the dockengaut had probably anticipated such a move, and she braked to a sudden stop and shoved backward with all the strength in her legs.

Her instincts had been right on point. Tendrils stabbed into the ground where she had been and where she had been headed, but by then she was already sailing high, her body flipping gracefully right over the dockengaut's body. As she cleared the monster's bulk, she threw up another set of shields to rebound off of, sending her to the far end of the room.

When Kyoko landed, she was holding a spear in each hand. Not exactly the best weapon against a carnivorous spider swarm, but these were a bit different than the type she usually wielded. The heads had an additional set of blades jutting out both sides, making them more likely to stick in whatever they penetrated, and the poles were long and had more segments, increasing their flexibility. Furthermore, a second set of blades were at the other end instead of a round weight.

As the dockengaut turned itself toward her, Kyoko spun around and hurled both spears toward it. The blades hit, and just as she had hoped they stuck fast. The dockengaut paused, though whether it was in confusion, curiosity, or amusement she couldn't tell, nor did she particularly care. The important thing was that it bought her an extra second or two.

The poles to the spears where long enough to still be in her hands when they hit. She seized them and then hurled the other ends toward the computer equipment.

What Kyoko had in mind was something of a longshot, but she couldn't afford to play it safe. Her spears may be conjured by magic, but the metal of the heads and poles still behaved as metal ought. And if the computer was made of similar design to the machines back home, then embedding one end in the dockengaut and the other in the computer would, with any luck, complete a deadly circuit, conducting electricity from its power source into the dockengaut itself.

That was the plan at least. And if this was a just universe or one of those shonen anime it would have worked.

Unfortunately, justice was something this world had in short supply.

As soon as the spear poles left her hand, the dockengaut lashed out with its tentacle-like spider legs. They snared the spear poles, wrapping around them and jerking them to a halt before they even came close to the electrical equipment.

Kyoko stiffened. Oh shit.

"I zzzhink not," the dockengaut hissed as it uncurled its body out from around the spearheads stuck in its body. Once they were loose, it contemptuously tossed both weapons to the side.

"Zzzhat equimentzzz wazzz ezzzpensssive," it told her. "I'll zzzhank you not to break it, zzzz."

Kyoko blinked. Then her face twisted into an angry scowl. Oh, to hell with this.

She took off running across the perimeter of the room, spearhead after spearhead appearing in her hands. She hurled them at the dockengaut right after another. Some missed. Others the dockengaut deflected with its magical whiplike limbs. A few even hit. It didn't seem to notice. That was fine. So long as its attention was on Kyoko and not what was happening around it, Kyoko was happy. Her hands were already glowing, reading to unleash a triple-thick cage of shield-plates around the disgusting thing. She was going to see how long its toughness held out when stuck in a constricting cage with no place to skitter away.

Then something snagged her foot.

Kyoko's momentum still pushed most of her body forward, but with her leg now jerked in the opposite direction her trajectory was suddenly redirected. She fell full on her face, breaking her nose and causing her vision to explode into dots.

Kyoko shook off the wooziness the best she could and twisted onto her back. The dockengaut had her right leg all tied up and was making its way toward her. The big bastard was taking its sweet time with it too, drawing it out. It knew she was helpless.

To hell with that!

Kyoko slashed out with another spear. She managed to sever about five of the tendrils, but the others yanked her weapon right out of her hand. In response, she extended her hand, shooting smaller, arrow-shaped spears from her sleeve. The dockengaut knocked them aside and kept coming.

Kyoko kept trying. She threw up a wall of shields, double-thick with no holes. The tendrils got all twisted up between the plates, but they didn't slice in two like she had hoped. A snap of her fingers, and it wrapped around the dockengaut, like she had originally planned. And then it started to squeeze.

But not for long. The cage shuddered shuddered, and then several black quills bit right through it surface, causing it to dissolve into sparks.

"Enough," the dockengaut sighed as it rose up. "I get it. You're a fighter. Good for you, zzzz." Then it seized Kyoko by the collar, jerked her up, and shoved her back down. The back of her head bounced against the stone floor. Then it pulled her up and did it again twice more.

And that was that.

The dockengaut wrapped its tendrils around Kyoko's body and lifted her high. Through half-closed eyes, she could see its writhing excuse for a face regard her with evident interest.

"Now," it said with an almost sensual purr. "Letzzz zzzee how you tazzzzte."

The spiders in its face then moved apart, opening up a wide, circular maw, filled with grasping legs and clicking mandibles.

Kyoko stared at it with a vague sense of unease. She knew that she should be concerned about this, that she probably should be resisting, but for some reason her thoughts refused to focus. Every time she tried to gather them together they slipped out of her grasp like sand through a sieve.

The dockengaut lifted her left arm to its face. Several of the black spiders' legs extended to brush against Kyoko's hand, almost as if it were smelling a choice piece of beef. Kyoko managed a slight frown and shook her head. Some of the fogginess was starting to dissipate.

Hey, wait a minute…

Then the dockengaut shoved Kyoko's forearm into its waiting maw and bit down. Kyoko's eyes bulged, and she screamed.

…

It was a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming, and there was nary a cloud in the sky. The weather was pleasantly balmy, and everyone in town was out in the sun.

Naturally, that made it the perfect time to have a picnic, so Kyoko found herself out in the middle of a grassy park, sitting on a blanket patterned with red diamonds. Papa and Mama were there, smiling as they took food from a basket and put them on plates. Chicken wings, sliced apples with peanut butter, hard-boiled eggs, and slices of cake were provided in ample supply.

Kyoko took her plate gratefully. But every time she tried to eat, the food seemed to evaporate in her hands, and her mouth closed around nothing. She squinted at her plate and, to her disappointment, found it empty. Another look, and she realized that Mama and Papa were gone, and she was alone.

She wondered if she should do something about that, but for some reason she couldn't summon up the energy to go look for them. And she wasn't that hungry anyway. The sun was making her too sleepy to eat.

Yawning, Kyoko lay back on the blanket and stared through half-lidded eyes at the sky, letting the warmth lull her to sleep.

Then she sensed someone kneeling down next to her. A shadow blotted out the sky. Kyoko blinked and squinted, trying to make it out.

A warm hand touched Kyoko's shoulder, and she heard Sayaka said, "Kyoko, get up."

Kyoko shook her head. She tried to tell Sayaka to go away, but she was too tired to manage anything more than a sleepy mumble.

"Get up, Kyoko," Sayaka said, insistently shaking Kyoko's shoulder. "You have to go up."

Kyoko shook her head again. Why wouldn't Sayaka leave her alone? She wanted to sleep.

"Your arm, Kyoko. Your arm!"

Her arm? What about her arm? Frowning, Kyoko's head turned to the left to see.

Her arm was gone.

Kyoko blinked in surprise. She raised her head. She could just make out the silhouette of Sayaka kneeling next to her. The blue-haired girl was pointing down at Kyoko's abandoned plate.

On it lay her missing arm. Great open wounds slashed through the flesh, some of them cutting deep enough into the muscle to expose white flashes of bone. Blood poured from the wounds like streams off a hillside to stain the blanket and leak into the grass. What skin remained was swollen and purple.

What was more, the entire thing was crawling with spiders.

"KYOKO!"

Kyoko sat up with a gasp, the shock jolting her fully back to consciousness. She was back in the dockengaut's cavern. How much time had gone by, she couldn't tell, but the fact that she seemed to be more-or-less uneaten meant that it probably wasn't much.

More-or-less…

A sickening premonition twisted her stomach. Swallowing, Kyoko slowly turned her head to the left. She already knew what she was going to see, but as much as it scared her, she had to look anyway.

Her left arm was gone, simply nipped off right under the elbow, sleeve and all. Red mist was still seeping from the wound, though the skin had knitted enough to staunch most of the flow. She could still feel it though, feel the burning throbbing all the way down to her missing fingers.

Kyoko stared numbly at the maimed stump. She felt as if she ought to be screaming. Everything inside of her certainly was. But for some reason, she could only lie still and stare.

Then she heard a sharp rustling sound.

Kyoko turned her head again. The dockengaut was still there, looming in the center of the room, its back to her. Its long neck was pulsating, surging in and out as the black spiders crawled over one another in a feeding frenzy. Tiny flecks of green fabric fell from the bottom of the neck to drift to the floor. Flashes of red swam through the swarm, illuminating the individual bodies.

"Hmmmm," the dockengaut said thoughtfully. "A bit…zzzour. She hazzz been consuming regenerazzzion zzzupplementzzz, zzz."

Then it faced her. It didn't turn around. In fact, its bottom half didn't shift at all. Rather, the spiders making up its head, neck, and shoulders simply detached from one another, came scrambling back to the main whole, and reformed themselves on the other side. "Ah vell. Nozzzing a few dayzzz of purging von't fixxxx,"

Something inside of Kyoko snapped. She had no more fear, no more bravado, no more anger, and no more determination. All that was left was the burning, mindless, primal desire to get out.

The scream she felt building within her finally burst free, tearing her throat raw. She bounded to her feet and thrust her remaining arm forward. The ground cracked, and a massive spear burst forward, its segments already separated. It was the same kind of spear she had used to kill Sayaka's witch form during her final moments.

Still screaming, Kyoko pointed her hand at the dockengaut. The spear struck like a snake, its point zeroing in on the monster's center of mass.

Unfortunately, its mass didn't stay centered for long. Instead of taking the hit like before, the dockengaut dissolved, the spiders scurrying off in all directions. But the spear didn't stop. It kept shooting forward until it hit the wall, just to the left of the computer. Dust and stone chips flew everywhere.

Then it just kept going, the head transforming into a drill and spinning rapidly. Kyoko leapt onto one of the segments and held on. The drill kept burrowing deeper and deeper, cutting right through solid rock.

Come on, Kyoko thought as she held on the best she could with only one arm. Come on, come on, come on. There's gotta be something…

Suddenly the drill bit all the way through the rock and plunged into open air. It shot forward like a bullet train through a tube, sailing through a pitch-black tunnel lit only by the meager light of Kyoko's bracelet. Unable and unwilling to do anything else, Kyoko closed her eyes and hung on.

And then the world faded away, and darkness claimed her.

…

"There's nothing left of it," Sayaka said, looking down at the plate.

Kyoko looked down at it too. Sure enough, her whole arm was gone, bones and all. There weren't even any scraps left. The spiders had eaten everything.

Sayaka looked up and flashed Kyoko a reassuring grin. "It's okay," she said. "We'll get you another one."

Kyoko frowned. There was a question she very much wanted to ask, but for some reason she couldn't muster up the energy to ask it. She still felt unbelievably tired, like a heavy, wet blanket had been draped over her shoulders and was weighing her down. It was such a struggle to even keep her eyes open, much less speak.

Kyoko yawned widely, like a cat. She was about to let herself fall over and take a nap, but then Sayaka grabbed her by the shoulders and held you up. "No," Sayaka said firmly. "I told you. You can't sleep now. Your arm is gone. Now your legs are in danger."

Legs? What was she talking about? What about her legs? Blinking slowly, Kyoko looked down. She was no longer kneeling on the tablecloth. Instead, she was now sitting in a hole of mud, one that was slowly sucking her up. Her legs had submerged completely, and now the mud had reached her stomach.

"Wake up, Kyoko. Wake up!"

Kyoko's eyes again snapped open.

For a few, endless moments, she was unable to make sense of anything she saw or felt. Hundreds of questions were shooting through her mind, faster than she could provide answers.

What? Where am I?

Everything is so blurry, like I'm looking through a melting window…

Who am I? What's my name?

It's…Kyoko. I'm Kyoko Sakura, of course I'm-

Where am I? What happened to me? Where's…where's my…

Okay, calm down. Calm down and-

Where am I? Why do I feel so strange? Where's Sayaka? Where's-

Kyoko's gut twisted into a knot. Her legs. There was something wrong with her legs. She tried to fumble around to feel them. Instead of touching the rough fabric of her shorts and the skin of her thigh, her fingers pressed against something warm and slimy. Kyoko blanched.

On the upside, the shock at least quieted her racing mind long enough for some of the pieces to fall into place. Right, right, right. The dockengaut. She had been fighting a dockengaut and barely escaped before passing out. She was probably still lost, and really needed to get her bearings and find her friends before something else tried to eat her, like the dockengaut-

A sickening feeling washed through her, bringing up even more memories. Kyoko tried to wriggle to wriggle her fingers. Her right hand at least reported that it was making an effort.

Her left, however, just registered a nauseating mixture of pain and emptiness.

It's gone, Kyoko thought numbly. My arm got eaten. I lost my freaking arm, I lost-

Then with a mental growl, she pushed those thoughts away and reasserted control. No, she couldn't let herself freak out now. That sort of thing was normal here. People lost limbs all the time, and always grew them back. She would be fine in a few minutes. Hell, she had even died a few times already, so this was nothing compared to that. The loss of her sweater's sleeve was a much bigger problem. She liked that sweater. It was one of the few mementos she had of her life.

That's it. Don't lose your head. Get mad instead.

Slowly but surely, Kyoko's panic started to burn, feeding her anger, which in turn was used to fuel her focus. Her scrambling thoughts began to reassemble themselves, allowing her to get a better hold on what had happened to her.

Her eyes weren't much use. Her flashlight bracelet had somehow turned off during the fight, and this place didn't have any convenient lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. Sighing, she brought her right hand up to her mouth and pressed her tongue against the On/Off switch. Thankfully it lit up, illuminating her surroundings, or at least most of them.

The best she could tell, she was still in some kind of cavern, this one even larger than the boneyard. The light from her bracelet barely reached the wall beyond. Strange though, they didn't seem to be made of stone though, or if they were, they were covered with something smooth and glossy.

Of greater concern were the things hovering around her like balloons, things that looked like large, misshapen bubbles that were tethered to the floor. Kyoko's forehead creased. There were things inside the bubbles, things that looked like-

Monsters.

Kyoko could only see a handful from her perspective, but one clearly had a few of those miscus things encased inside. They were twitching against one another, struggling against the substance that enveloped them. Another held something that looked like an extremely hairy sloth with claws the length of her forearms and an alligator's head. It long limbs were curled up around into the fetal position and it didn't move. Yet another held what looked like a spiny dinosaur.

Kyoko got the feeling that she was only seeing a small portion of the menagerie around her. Something was collecting various creatures and sticking them inside these bubbles. She glanced down and found out what the sticky stuff was. While she wasn't encased in a balloon like the others, her legs were still covered with some sort of weird slime, gluing her to the ground.

Wait, that wasn't the ground…

Her mind put two and two together and came up with a disturbing four. She had figured out why her sense of direction was so wonky. She was upside-down. She and the other trapped creatures weren't floating in balloons, they were hanging from the ceiling, with who knew how much distance between them and the floor.

She had been caught. Something had captured her and was now saving her for later. Which meant she had to get out of there before lunchtime rolled around.

Then her peripheral vision registered movement.

Kyoko bit down on her tongue to keep from gasping. An arm was reaching up, an arm that was as thick as a telephone pole and twice as long. It was made of three sausage-shaped segments covered with a pale-white, spiny exoskeleton and ended in six multi-jointed fingers that were armored like a knight's gauntlet with bony plates and ended in chisel-like points.

As Kyoko watched, the fingers wrapped around the bubble encasing the alien sloth. It gave a sharp tug, and the bubble was yanked off its moorings. Then two more arms reached up. One sliced a fingertip across the bubble's surface, splitting it open. The other hauled the sloth out into the air.

The sudden movement must have woken the sloth up, as it immediately started thrashing and slashing at the fingers with its own claws. It screeched out hoarse bellows of terror as it was carried in one long, fluid movement down beyond the reach of Kyoko's sight.

The cries reached a crescendo, and then abruptly cut off.

Then Kyoko heard the sound of something crunching.

Kyoko inhaled slowly through her clenched teeth. She twitched and jerked, around to get a better look. When she did she saw something that made her miss the dockengaut.

A great big…something was hanging from the ceiling, surrounded by its imprisoned snacks. It was like an inverted cactus built around the same general plan as the arms, only about twice as thick and with a great many more segments. The arms sprouted in groups of three from the narrow joints where the segments connected, and reached out in all directions to brace against the slick walls of the cave.

There was no way to judge just how long the monster was, as it stretched down beyond the reach of Kyoko's meager light. But give the colossal size of the bahemont, Kyoko was willing to bet that this particular abomination had been designed on a similar scale.

Suddenly Kyoko didn't really want to be on an alien planet anymore.

The center stalk twitched, and then, with a low groan, it started to twist around. Kyoko held her breath as the segments bend around, causing the end to slowly rise up out of the dark. Its head was the size of a bus stop and reminded her of a thistle blossom, with several fleshy tongues surrounded by thorny protrusions. It was not a mouth she wanted to be anywhere near.

As the Worm (and honestly, anything that size was fully deserving of the capitalization) rose up, the various cocoons around Kyoko came alive. All of the imprisoned creatures that were still conscious began to thrash and shriek, trying desperately and futilely to escape. But all of their claws, teeth, and horns were unable to pierce through the membrane that held them.

All save for one.

A beast that looked like something had inflated a praying mantis to the size of a horse and forced it to breed with a medieval armory managed to make the smallest tear in its prison. It shoved as many of its bladed limbs into the hole as it could and ripped it wider, all the while shoving its body through the hole as it hissed in fear. It squirmed and writhed and managed to haul itself free of its cocoon.

Too bad there was nowhere for it to go except down.

Kyoko watched silently as the mantis slipped and fell into the abyss below. Unless its armored hide was tougher than diamonds or there were an inexplicable pile of pillows waiting for it below, the landing was probably going to be messy and final. However, even it would have no doubt preferred that end to what ended up happening instead.

As the Worm rose higher, its head coming to level with its screaming prey, one of its arm dipped down low and caught the mantis with ease. Its fingers wrapped around the beast's body and lifted it back up. Like the sloth before it, the mantis continued to fight, hacking away with everything it had. It made no difference.

The Worm's tongues stretched out to wrap around the mantis's body. They drew it in, like a sea anemone bring in an entrapped fish.

Again, the hissing stopped. And there was the sound of crunching.

Kyoko shook herself out of her horrified trance. She had to go now.

For a brief moment, she was afraid that the light on her wrist would attract the Worm's attention, and moved to shut it off. But then she paused.

Despite the light shining over its head, the Worm was ignoring her completely, its attention focused on the wall. Frowning, Kyoko moved her arm back and forth, changing the direction of the light. No response.

The thing was blind. Well, of course it was. It lived in a giant cave far beneath the surface. That didn't make it any less dangerous, but it did mean Kyoko didn't have to do this in the dark.

The second thing she noticed was that despite the many delicious snacks hanging within easy reach, the Worm didn't seem all that interested in feeding. Maybe the sloth and the mantis had filled it up, though given its sheer size Kyoko doubted that that was the case.

Kyoko adjusted the light.

The Worm's lower hands, the ones closest to it head, were all holding what looked like large chunks of stone. It was lifting them towards the far wall across from Kyoko. Kyoko squinted. It was hard to tell, but there seemed to be a large, gaping hole there, one that the Worm was trying to fill.

As the Worm pressed the stone chunks into the hole, Kyoko realized what had happened. That hole had been made by her. That spear had carried her right into the Worm's lair, which was how it had caught her. It also explained why it had settled for anchoring her legs instead of stuffing her into a full cocoon. It was mostly concerned with fixing the damage to its cave and would probably deal with her later.

But why though? Why was it so important that the break had to be plugged up so quickly? Surely something as monstrous as this had nothing to fear. As Kyoko watched, the Worm ran its tongues over each stone before putting it into place, smearing a sort of clear slime. There was something odd about the way it moved, something a little too frenzied for a monster that size.

One of the stones must not have been anchored correctly, as it slipped and started to fall. The Worm reacted immediately, lurching down to catch before hastily applying more slime and shoving it back into place.

Kyoko blinked. Okay, that had almost looked like panic. And it further drove home that she needed to escape immediately. Anything scary enough to make this thing desperate was not something she wanted to meet.

A thousand possibilities flew past Kyoko's mind. Something like the bahemont, only somehow larger. Huge snakes with crushing jaws. Creatures made of darkness, all writhing tentacles and grasping hands. A friggin' T-rex, she didn't know.

Or did she?

Something came loose in Kyoko's memory, a conversation she had…God, it felt like decades, but couldn't have been more than a couple weeks, if that. Back when she had still been in the comfortably in Hell's garden spot, right before taking that final step to plunge into the abyss.

…

Then…

Like everything else in Cloudbreak, the hotel room was equal parts weird and gorgeous. Kyoko, who had lived most of her existence as a Puella Magi out of hotel rooms, had to admit that even when she had gotten cocky and broken into something more extravagant had never come across a room half this interesting. For one, it was huge. You could fit a modestly sized apartment inside the space their room took up and still squeeze in a small balcony. For another, it was two-story, with a staircase leading up from the bar (and yes, there was a freaking bar) to a landing filled with tiger-patterned couches, chairs, and an entertainment system that looked like it required payment per use. And finally, the whole place looked like something out of Caribbean king's palace, with polished wooden floors and walls, fat-bellied pillars, paintings of tropical locations set in golden frames, and enough potted plants to stock an old lady's beloved garden. And it had an aquarium full of brightly colored fish and other interesting aquatic critters that she could swim in. Sayaka certainly looked like she wanted to try, judging by the way her attention was drawn to it.

In any other situation, Kyoko would be running around pushing buttons and confirming her suspicions that the canopied beds had water mattresses. Unfortunately, Charlotte was in another one of her moods. Kyoko's creepy encounter with that docka-thingy at the skyport seemed to really have shaken her and Mami, and for some inexplicable reason she had decided that it was all Kyoko's fault. She had been gripping hard onto Kyoko's shoulder ever since they had reached the hotel and had all but marched her straight to their room with an angry expression on her face.

"Okay," Charlotte said as they entered the room. She led Kyoko over to one of the beds and shoved her down onto it. "Sit."

As it turned out, they were indeed water mattresses, but unfortunately Kyoko was unable to indulge in her need to climb on and start jumping up and down. Scowling, she wrested her shoulder free instead. "Hey, hands off the goods. I didn't do anything."

"You mouthed off a dockengaut. That is very much something."

"So?" Kyoko said with a shrug. "Ooooh, big creepy alien slithering around, stealing hotdogs. So what? I've fought worse."

Here Charlotte's eyes narrowed. "No, you have not," she growled. "And I swear to God, you take this seriously and listen to what I have to say, or I'm going to march right up to the Capitol Spire and turn us all in right this second."

That make Kyoko go stiff. "You wouldn't."

In answer, Charlotte shoved a finger against Kyoko's chest. "Shut. Up. Right. Now."

"Kyoko, just do it," Mami said in a low voice. She had already shut the door and locked it securely.

This time, Kyoko obeyed, but not without sullenly crossing her arms, legs, and glowering up at Charlotte with a look of defiance.

Charlotte just glared right back. She was good at it too, and finally Kyoko sighed and relaxed a bit. She glanced away, uncrossed her legs, and motioned for Charlotte to continue.

"Now, if you've got your moody teenager bullshit out of your system, you better pay close attention," Charlotte said. "I don't care how tough you think you are. Everything you've ever done, everyone you ever fought, all of that amounts to high-school detention. Well, you're in prison now, and you're are officially the new blood. And the monsters out there are bigger, meaner, and scarier than anything you've ever had to face, and that thing was the biggest, meanest, scariest one of them all." She reached over to poke Kyoko in the chest. "It's your first day of the yard, and if you want half a chance of surviving out there, you will start taking this seriously."

"You think I'm not," Kyoko said, swatting her hand away. It was an accusation, not a question.

"Prove it," Charlotte retorted.

Kyoko opened her mouth to respond, but Mami had already walked over to the bed and knelt down next to it. She took Kyoko's hand in her own as she pled, "Kyoko, please listen to her. This is a whole new world to you. You can't just rush out without knowing what you're up against."

Kyoko grimaced. Lingering tension aside, it was still difficult to snap at Mami when she got like that. "Okay. Okay, point taken," she said, gingerly removing her hand from Mami's. "So, what the hell is a dockengaut, and why is everyone so scared of them?"

Charlotte pursed her lips. Then she turned to the nightstand and picked up what looked like a rectangle of clear, but darkened, plastic.

The rectangle turned out to be a screen, some kind of miniature computer, and after pressing a few buttons, Charlotte turned it toward Kyoko. Puzzled, Kyoko watched what looked like a scene from a nature documentary.

"That's it?" she said. "A bunch of spiders? So what? Grab some Raid."

Mami sighed. Shaking her head, Charlotte pressed a few more buttons to fast-forward the video, and showed it to Kyoko again. Now the spiders were converging on what appeared to be a captive antelope. The end for the poor animal was both predictable and disturbing.

Kyoko blinked at the gruesome scene. "Oh."

"Do you know what an apex predator is?" Charlotte said, turning the screen off and setting it back down.

"Sure." A whole lot of her now-decaying personal philosophy had been based upon the concept. "It's the animal that's at the absolute top of the food chain, the big dog in the yard.

"Right," Charlotte nodded. "There, you got your lion, tigers, bears-"

"Oh my," Kyoko said automatically.

Again proving that all the witches of the afterlife had been seeing the wrong movies, Charlotte merely furrowed her brow a bit. Then she shrugged and said, "Right. And once one of those guys show up, everyone takes off. Prey and smaller predators alike. But even the biggest, baddest predator runs for its life when army ants are on the move. You know what those are, right?"

Here Kyoko had to think a bit. "I think so. They like swarm out through the jungle, eating everything in sight."

"Exactly," Charlotte said, And there is nothing that can stop them. Now, picture a swarm of army ants, only guided by an intelligent mind, one that's cruel, violent, always hungry, and doesn't give a shit about how tough you are, how tough anyone is, because there is nothing that can touch them. Dockengauts come from a planet full of monsters. Everything there is dangerous and wants to kill you. But no matter how big or how mean they are, everything there is terrified of dockengauts. They rule the scariest planet in the universe unchallenged. And they will eat you alive if they have the chance. Don't give them one.

…

It's the dockengauts, Kyoko thought as she watched the Worm scramble to repair its den. That's what it's so afraid of. All of that glossy stuff it was coating the walls with must keep them out.

Well, Kyoko couldn't exactly blame it, but she wasn't in the mood to get eaten by anything, worm or spider. Which meant it was time for desperate measures.

Her backpack was still on her shoulders, sagging downward. Kyoko glanced over at her left arm. The upper bit, elbow, and part of her forearm had all grown back, but the regeneration had yet to reach her wrist. Just as well. She only needed the elbow.

Moving quickly as she could, Kyoko slipped her right arm out of its strap and maneuvered the pack into the crux of her left elbow. She fiddled with the zipper and pulled it as quietly as she could. Fortunately, the din of her fellow snacks-to-be drowned out the sound.

From there, she rummaged around until she came up with another helping of med gel and SolBlanc. Taking a deep breath, she jabbed both syringes right into her maimed shoulder.

The evil, vile stuff flooded into her vapors, encouraging their activity while flushing her body with fever. Kyoko's vision swam for a moment, then she shook her head, sending droplets of sweat flying.

Dropping the empty syringes into the dark, Kyoko zipper her backpack back up and twisted around until it had been moved back into place.

Next, she made a quick appraisal of the rest of her surroundings. There was a wall not far from her back, frosted over with hard slime like the rest. However, as she twisted this way and that to get a better look, she saw several dark patches in the resin, standing out sharply against the milky white.

Holes. The dark spots were caverns with their entrances slimed over. Apparently the Worm and the dockengauts had a history. How the slime managed to be so effective at keeping them out while one renegade drill-spear had somehow cut through accidentally Kyoko didn't know. One would think that at least one of them would have some sort of magical trick or bit of technology that could get them in. They had computers. Couldn't they get their legs on a power drill?

Well, it wasn't any concern of hers. All she needed to know was the location of the holes.

Okay, next step. Ignoring the way her head was throbbing, Kyoko focused on where her feet had been slimed to the ceiling. There was a good half-a-meter of nothing but hardened goop between her soles and the stone. That would do.

Big spears took a lot out of her, but she didn't have time to be stingy. Kyoko glanced over to the nearby wall, made a fist, and mimed a yanking motion.

The Worm's goop may be tough. It may be hard. It may be damned near impossible for your average monster to tear its way through with tooth and claw. But it had proved ineffective against Kyoko's magic once already.

The spear slashed through the wall, cutting through the slime that bound Kyoko's feet and kept right on going. Kyoko fell about two meters before landing on a shield she had thrown up for that very purpose. She then flopped onto her back, summoned another, smaller spear, and went to work hacking her legs apart.

The larger spear twisted around in midair like a snake, its head now whirring shrilly as it span. The Worm jerked back in surprise, but the spear wasn't going for it. Rather, it zeroed in on the patched hole and struck.

Still-hardening slime and stone chips flew everywhere. The spear bore all the way through and vanished, leaving the hole gaping again.

And through it they poured, thousands of tiny black dots. They skittered over the glossy walls in all directions, an army of stabbing legs and ravenous mandibles.

The spiders spread out in all directions, searching for prey…and fell right off. None of them got far before their legs slipped off the glossy resin and sent them tumbling down.

They weren't deterred for long.

For a brief second, Kyoko thought she was hallucinating from all the drugs. Something that very much resembled a black tongue was stretching out of the hole, pushing towards the Worm like it wanted to lick it. But then she realized that it was the dockengaut itself. It was using the same trick it had created its "body" with to form a bridge, with all the spiders crawling over one another and hooking their legs together to traverse the expanse without touching the walls. Kyoko's head was still swimming, and it was such a horrifically bizarre choice that for a few moments she could only hang still and stare, transfixed as the bridge of spiders reached further and further.

The Worm, however, wasn't so docile. It reared back away and spat gobs of slime at the bridge. It hit in two places and stuck. The bridge shuddered and collapsed, taking hundreds of spiders with it.

Unfortunately for the Worm, it was too little, too late. Enough spiders had gotten close enough to leap the distance. Apparently the Worm's body didn't have the same repelling effects as the slime, as they immediately began to scramble all over its body, slipping beneath the armored exoskeleton and attacking the joints. The Worm writhed in agony, swiping at its body with its many hands, trying desperately to get the spiders off of it. All around it, the menagerie of imprisoned monsters filled the air with their frenzied cries.

Then one of its arms was gnawed right off. It fell, trailing black ichor.

In the distraction created by the Worm's panic, the bridge reformed itself. The dockengaut must have called all its friends to join in, because there were far, far more than what Kyoko had fought in the cave. The bridge surged all the way across and struck the side of the thrashing Worm. And from there, the spiders spread out like a stain of ink.

Kyoko finally jerked out of her trance. Okay, okay. Time to go.

The giant spear she had summoned up had reared back once the hole had been opened. She got up on shaky and still slippery legs and leapt onto its shaft. Clinging to it was difficult. Her legs still had enough slime to make gripping difficult, and her limbs had trouble coordinating, so she almost fell off. Gritting her teeth, she seized one of the chains linking the segments together and hung on.

She definitely wasn't going to be going back the way she came. She was done with dark tunnels filled with horrors. She wanted out.

Then there was a hoarse groan, followed by the sound of a snap, and the Worm was dislodge fully from its perch. It fell, tons of meat and slime encased in an armored carapace that had become its coffin, taking hundreds of spiders with it.

The Worm was large and fell fast. Even so, it was a full five seconds before Kyoko heard the crash.

The spear she had used to open the hole was still reared back, thankfully out of reach of the dockengauts. She commanded it to swing back around and attack the dark spot on the wall. Hopefully all the dockengauts had converged on the opening on the other side.

For once, her prayers were answered. The spear vanished, and Kyoko stood up and leapt through the new exit. The cavern beyond was as dark and foreboding, but a quick scan confirmed that it was, at least for now, empty.

Kyoko turned around to the gash she had torn in the layer of hardened slime. Her hands glowed softly, adding red to the pale white light, and she pressed them against the wall of the departed Worm's lair. The gash shivered, and then hastily healed itself, cutting her off from the carnage beyond. The inhuman screaming cut off abruptly.

Shaking, Kyoko almost collapsed right then and there. But as much as she wanted to, now was not the time to rest. Instead, she slapped some feeling back into her still-sticky legs, readjusted her backpack, and started running.

…

The dockengaut tunnels, as Kyoko was gradually coming to realize, were immense. She had been running for several minutes and thankfully hadn't encountered any more of the monsters (maybe they were all feasting on the Worm and its captives) and had to choose between so many branching paths that she had long lost count.

In time, she came to suspect that she was actually in a city. A huge, sprawling dockengaut city, one that extended its limbs out for kilometers beneath the earth. Still, she couldn't help but wonder why the tunnels themselves were so large. The dockengauts themselves certainly didn't need so much room. Those tiny holes she had seen that first one emerging from were more than enough.

Maybe it had originally been tunneled out by some larger beast, only to be chased out or devoured by millions of spiders who wanted its home for their own. Maybe the Worm itself and others like it had been responsible, and Kyoko had just helped them kill of the last of its kind. Or maybe (and Kyoko had a sinking suspicion that this was the case) the reason she wasn't running into any other dockengauts was that they used the small tunnels to get around, while these larger ones were for moving equipment, plunder, and still-living food into their nests.

Well, if that was the case, there had to be some kind of exit. Those computers had been moved in from somewhere. She just had to keep going until she found a tunnel that led to the surface.

Kyoko slowed to a stop. She hunched over, hands on her knees, breath coming out heavy and exhausted. Well, the upside was that her hands could once again be counted in the plural, but she was just way too tired to do any more walking. Her legs were currently caught up in a strange conflict between cold numbness and throbbing pain while every other part of her body twanged and ached. Her head was pounding and waves of nausea were still twisting her stomach.

I am, she thought as she slowly slumped to the ground and leaned back against a rock. So sick. Of getting beat up. All the. Freaking. Time. Seriously, wasn't the afterlife supposed to be a place of rest? She hadn't even been here a month, and had spent more time stretched far past the point of exhaustion than she had with anything even resembling actual rest.

Well, the bulk of that could be laid at Annabelle Lee and her stupid friends' feet. Well, metaphorically speaking anyway. If it weren't for them chasing Kyoko and her companions all the way through that spawn site, Kyoko wouldn't be in this godawful place right now. And if they hadn't tried to freaking kidnap her and Sayaka that one time, that whole mess at Etherdale wouldn't have happened. Which in turn meant that she could blame them for Marsters as well.

Gotta do something about her, Kyoko thought as she massaged her spasming legs. This is just gonna keep happening until we get rid of them for good. As soon as I find the others and we get out of here, we need to sit down and figure out a way to…

Kyoko's chin dipped into her chest, and her eyes closed against their will.

"You need to be more careful," Sayaka chided as she wiped down Kyoko's muddy legs with a damp towel. "You lost one arm already. You can't afford to be careless with the rest of your limbs."

Kyoko nodded solemnly. She frowned. There was something important she needed to ask, before Sayaka left again. "Sayaka, where are you?"

"Hmmm?"

"Where are you? Where's Mami and Charlotte? How do I get out-"

Then she stopped. She was talking to empty air. Sayaka was gone, and Kyoko was alone.

A strange feeling welled up within her, an almost overwhelming wave of grief and loss. Kyoko was alone. Everyone she cared about was gone. In time, they all left her.

Blinking away the tears, Kyoko stood up. All around her the meadow was dying, the grass paling into sickly green and gradually turning brown. The sunlight was becoming thin and weak as grey clouds blotted out the blue. The picnic was over. Now she had to leave.

She started walking, and the world kept dying. Soon she was surrounded by nothing but skeletal trees, dark skies, and withered leaves on a cold ground. A bitter wind was blowing, making her draw her meager jacket in closer. She had to keep moving, she had to find-

Her foot bumped against something metal.

Kyoko looked down. There, lying at her feet among the dead grass, was one of her spears, its tip pointing in the same direction she had been heading. As she watched, it twitched a few times to the right, like a restrained animal struggling against its chains.

Then it started to spin like the dial of a manic compass. The spear became a circular blur of motion, a yellow disc with a red border. It made Kyoko's eyes hurt just to look at it.

Suddenly it stopped, its point now facing a direction off to Kyoko's right. Kyoko squinted down the path it had marked out for her. It was hard to see, for night had fallen, and shadows now covered the field.

Still, there seemed to be a faint dot of light, far away. The spear was pointed right at it.

As Kyoko stood and stared at the light, the wind picked up, and the shadows grew darker. And out of the dark she heard the sound of thousands of skittering legs.

Kyoko's head jerked up with a slight gasp. She was still in the tunnel, lit only by the faint halo of her bracelet, her newly regenerated hand gripping tight around her necklace. The arrow's points bit into her palm and fingers, which was strangely comforting, all things considered.

She instinctively checked herself to see what new native monstrosity was currently preparing her for dinner. But for once luck was with her, or maybe she had only been out for a minute or two. It was impossible to tell either way. It could be the next day for all she knew.

Shivering, Kyoko stood up, adjusting the straps of her backpack. As she did, something inside it clinked.

She paused, frowning. Something about her dream was niggling at her mind, like a worm burrowing into the back of her head. A spinning spear on the ground. A light in the distance. A sharp arrow, pointing the way. She fingered her necklace as she thought. Something about that was important. It couldn't mean the necklace itself, could it? Unless it had some sort of special enchantment that Sayaka had never bothered to tell her about, she didn't see how it-

Then realization struck her. She quickly shrugged the backpack off and unzipped it, wincing at how loud it sounded in the dark. She fumbled around its contents until she found what she was looking for.

Out she drew Elsa Maria's compass, the one that had led Sayaka to Mami and Charlotte, when Kyoko had been lying unconscious.

Kyoko had no idea how the thing worked, or if it would even work for anyone other than its imprisoned master. Still, it was all she had. Lifting it close to her mouth, she whispered. "Hey! Look, I don't know how this works, but I really, really need help. I'm lost in the closest thing to Hell this place has, and I can't find the way out."

She turned the compass around in her hands, hoping that would galvanize it into action. Unfortunately, the needle just lazily swung back and forth on its pin without indicating any sort of specific direction. It didn't even seem to have a North to focus on.

Gritting her teeth, Kyoko all but pleaded, "Please! Please, help me!"

The needle paused, as if considering her words.

Suddenly, just like the spear in her dream, it starting spinning. Kyoko held her breath as it went around and around and around, searching for the right path.

Then, again like her dream, it came to a sudden stop, pointing at a tunnel to her right.

"Is that it?" Kyoko said. "Is that the way?"

She turned the body of the compass around. But no matter which way she turned it, the needle remained fixed in its position, stubbornly jabbing at the tunnel as if to say, "Yes! That way, you idiot!"

Kyoko breathed out a low sigh of relief. "Thank you."

Then Kyoko heard the sound of a whimper.

She perked up, ears straining and eyes searching. "H-Hello?" she said in a hoarse whisper. Part of her wondered if she had imagined it. With all the drugs swimming through her system, it would be small wonder if her addled mind developed a weird sense of humor.

Then she heard it again, a small, strangled cry of misery. No, it wasn't her imagination. It had been real, it had definitely been human, and it was close. But it was coming from a path more to her left, the opposite direction from where the needle was indicating.

Kyoko hesitated. She looked down at the compass, which was still doggedly pointing to the right. She knew that she ought to start following it, but what if it was one of her friends, also lost and alone? She had asked the compass to show her the way out, after all, not point the way to the others.

"Okay, I'll head that way in just a minute," she said to the compass. "I just need to check this out. Just keep at it. This shouldn't take long.

With that, she slipped the compass into her jacket pocket.

Moving as silently as she could, Kyoko crept along the wall, careful to avoid accidentally touching it. The last thing she needed was to disturb some hidden nest of eye-eating gnats or something. There was a hole in the wall close by, about the size of a small window and set at chest height. The pained cries were coming from within.

"Sayaka?" Kyoko whispered as she crouched in front of the hole and shone her light in. "Mami? Charlotte? Anybody?" Hell, at this point she would take Annabelle Lee.

Her light swept back and forth, illuminating another bare stone cave. Frowning, she moved it more to the left, where the whimpers were coming from.

Then her light fell upon white flesh, and she went stiff. A human was there, a naked girl with pale hair plastered closely to her scalp and around her sunken cheeks. She was lying against stalagmite, her arms bent back and bound to the stone by some kind of sticky goop, and was letting out agonized groans and gasps.

She was little more than a child.

Gritting her teeth, Kyoko glanced around, wondering what she should do. This was far from the time to play hero. She could barely defend herself, much less a second person. And her light only reached so far. There was no telling what other nasty things were in that cave with the girl. Something had bound her to that rock. Probably the dockengauts, if Charlotte's stories were true.

Leave, whispered a voice in her head, the same voice she had been listening to for the bulk of her last year of life. She's nothing to you. Leave now, and save yourself.

Kyoko grimaced. She was trying very hard to ignore that voice these days, but in this specific case it might have a point.

Then the girl heaved out an anguished sob, and Kyoko sighed.

"Hey!" she called through the hole. "Pssst!"

The girl stopped crying, her bulbous eyes somehow bulging out even further in shock. Then she noticed the light.

"Over here!" Kyoko said, waving. "Hold on. I'm gonna get you out of there."

In answer, the girl stared in disbelief. She opened her mouth and let out a croaking sound. She seemed to be trying to say something.

"What?" Kyoko frowned. "What is it?"

The girl grimaced. There was something really weird about the way her throat was moving. She seemed to swallow something and tried again.

"Get. Out."

Kyoko was about to protest, to tell her that she was going to make it, but then the girl gagged. Her chest and throat started to convulse, with her mouth opening wider with each jerk. It looked like she was trying to vomit something up.

Then six pale white spider legs forced their way out of her mouth.

Kyoko jerked back in shock. One of the white dockengauts spiders was emerging from the girl's mouth. It clung to cheeks and nose, sitting perched as if the girl's face was its web.

Then four of its legs rose up. They stretched up over its body and pointed outward.

Directly at Kyoko, to be exact.

The spider leapt off the girl's face and landed on the window. Kyoko slashed at it with her spear, but it merely skittered back behind the wall.

Then three black spiders suddenly appeared in the window. Four more joined them, followed by seven. Another white spider crawled down into the upper part of the hole. Spiders were now pouring out of the girl's mouth to crawl down all over her body. Some were leaping the gulf between her and the window, while others were scurrying down toward the ground or up the stalagmite, all of them making their way toward the scent of fresh meat.

"And vhat izzz zhizzz?" shivered a dockengaut voice from within the cave and around the window. "Little girl, are you lozzzzt?"

Kyoko knew she ought to run, but found herself swaying on her feet as another wave of dizziness swept through her. She couldn't tear from the imprisoned girl, of whom there was now very little left. Sickly yellowish smoke was rising up, though not as much as one might expect.

The spiders, she thought. She felt curiously calm, as if she were doing nothing more than watching a nature documentary. They're absorbing it, inhaling her soul. Eaten alive. Just like those animals. Just like the Worm. All just meat to them, all just-

NO!

Kyoko's pupils suddenly contracted, and she was back. She rolled back over her shoulders, landed on her feet, and fled from the window while the spiders surged out after her, filling the dark with the sound of thousands of tiny, skittering legs.

…

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Kyoko angrily chided herself as she raced along, exerting every bit of strength to stay ahead of the echoing hailstorm that was pursuing her. She had fallen trap to the same idiotic mistake that every doomed girl made in all those scary movies she had loved so much. Never, ever, ever abandon a sure escape to go investigating a strange noise! And now the killer was after her!

She now held Elsa Maria's compass in front of her as she ran, obediently following its every instruction as the needle jerked to the left and right, leading her down one tunnel after another. She didn't know if it was possible for an inanimate object to be smug, but if it were capable of speaking, the compass would definitely be telling her that it told her so.

"Hurry," she seethed through her teeth. "Come on, come on, come on! Where's that damned exit?"

You'll never find it, whispered a dark voice from the back of her mind. They'll catch you. They overpower you. They'll eat you. And you will never, ever see the light of day again.

You wanted to go to Hell. Congratulations. You've arrived.

This time, Kyoko didn't even have the will to go tell the voice to go screw itself.

Suddenly the tunnel opened up, and Kyoko found herself in a wide open cavern. At least, the light from her bracelet didn't reach far enough to illuminate the walls (damn, she really needed to have Charlotte show her how to work the thing). The floor wasn't exactly a floor though. It was more of a sharp slope, made up of rough stones and thick stalagmites rising up to Kyoko's left. The needle swiftly jerked hard in that direction.

"That way?" Kyoko said. "Up the hill? Okay."

She ran up as fast as she could, scrambling over rocks and leaping over boulders. Soon the wall came into sight, and was thankfully monster-free. Another dark tunnel was set into the wall, which the needle was pointed directly toward.

Well, that worked for Kyoko. She reached the top of the slope and half-ran, half-limped on increasingly hurting legs right through it. Okay, daylight please. Right now. Moonlight is fine too. Any kind of light. Just get me out of this-

Then she came face-to-face with a stone wall.

"What?" she gaped. "It's…" She touched the wall and found it solid. "It's a dead end! Why'd you take me to a dead end?"

The compass provided no answer. In fact, it had stopped pointing at anything in particular. The needle was now swinging back and forth, seemingly focused on a spot directly in front of the wall.

Fighting back against her rising panic, Kyoko did her best to think. Okay, okay, dead end. So…is there a trap door? Do I need to blow through this wall too? Do I even have enough magic left for that? Or…

Then she heard the skittering.

Kyoko whirled around, her back to the wall. In front of her, she could see the dark entrance to the cavern she had just left. Within, she could hear the dockengaut's swarm of spiders were moving over the stones, their sharp legs scratching loudly against the rock.

And then they stopped.

Kyoko tensed up. She swallowed and wiped sweat from her brow. This was it.

Then she heard the dry buzz of a dockengaut's voice echo out of the cavern. "Mmmm. Hello, my friendzzz. What bringzzz youzzz here?"

Then a second voice answered it. "Purzzzuing my prey. Azzz you vell know, zzzz."

Kyoko started. It was the first dockengaut, the one whose lair she had to break free from. It had somehow followed her all this way.

The other dockengaut, the one she had seen devouring the girl, replied. "Your prey? Mmmm, zhere I muzzzt dizzzagree."

"Leave, friendzzzz. The human izzzz mine. You hazzzz a meat zzzlave already. Thizzz one belongzzz to me."

Kyoko's breath caught in her throat. They weren't going to fight, were they?

"Hazzz you never heard zhe zzzzaying, finderzzz keeperzzzz? Zhizzz vone izzzz mine. Eizzzher I eatzzz her, or I eatzzz you. Choozzzzze."

There was a pause, and then the other dockengaut said in exactly the same tone it had used on Kyoko, "Try me."

Then the cave filled with the sounds of frantic scurrying, of bloodthirsty hissing, of hard carapaces being cracked open.

Kyoko's jaw dropped. They were fighting, were tearing each other apart that very moment! And all over who got to be the one to eat her! Forget scary, forget evil, dockengauts were freaking insane!

Well, as bizarre as the situation might be, Kyoko certainly wasn't going to stop it from happening. With any luck, the winner would be weakened enough for her to overpower it and…do what? Go where? The compass was a bust. She was still trapped in the depths of Hell with no escape in sight. And it was only a matter of time before another dockengaut found her.

Shivering, Kyoko leaned back against the wall and looked down at the compass in her hand. "Some help you were," she said bitterly as she rolled her wrist around, watching the needle spaz out. "Ah, who was I kidding? Elsa Maria probably just gave you to the fish to make her feel better about-"

Then she frowned. The needle was still remaining fixed on a point in front of the wall, but it was doing something interesting as she moved it around. Curious, she bent her wrist forward, so that the face of the compass was directly facing her.

Now the needle was pointing straight up.

Not allowing herself to dare hope, Kyoko's eyes slowly moved up. The ceiling of the tunnel suddenly curved upward about a meter or so before the wall.

Kyoko reached one shaking hand over and turned off her bracelet. She blinked a few times until her eyes adjusted, but when they did, she saw a pinpoint of light directly over her head.

Oh.

"I take it back," she whispered gratefully to the compass. "Um, good job. Sorry about being a jerk." With that, she shoved it back into her pocket and turned her attention back upward while eagerly rubbing her palms together.

Okay, how to work this? If Mami was around she could just create a ladder or a bungee cord with her ribbons, and Sayaka had those floating wheel thingies that could be used as an elevator. Unfortunately neither were around, and Kyoko's powers weren't really suited for tight spaces. She supposed she could use her shields to create stairs, but she was kind of pressed for time and-

The noise of battle coming from the cavern slowed, and one of the dockengaut's let out a triumphant chuckle, sending fingernails down Kyoko's back. Apparently the fight was over.

Screw it. It was time to give her dream a literal meaning.

Kyoko thrust her hand upward and let out all the magic she could gather up. The ground beneath her cracked, and a long-poled spear shot straight up. She seized it with both hands and her legs and let it yank her into the air.

From there, she rode the spear's momentum as it shot higher and higher, the pinpoint of light growing larger and larger. Come on, she thought as she ascended. Must go faster, must go faster, must go-

And then she was there. Kyoko all but flew up into the open air, out of the hole, out of the dockengauts' lair, out of Hell, and into the alien sky.

…

Call me a sadist, but the more dark, twisted, and disturbing a chapter gets, the more fun I have writing it. Now I know why so many horror writers are such nice people in real life. Because they have the best outlet imaginable.

Anyway, if you're curious, dockengauts are inspired by the short story Lennington vs. the Ants, Tarantulas from Beast Wars, the Dead Hand from Ocarina of Time, the Swarm from that stupid Christopher Columbus cartoon, and the space spiders from the Lost in Space movie. And they are so, so much fun to write.

Until next time, everyone.